


For Egypt

by pendrecarc



Category: Mara Daughter of the Nile - Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Intrigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:27:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28122357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendrecarc/pseuds/pendrecarc
Summary: Mara is introduced to palace intrigue not as a pawn in the hands of powerful men, but as the long-time confidante and handmaiden of the princess Inanni.
Relationships: Hints of Mara/Inanni and Mara/Sheftu, Mara & Inanni (Mara Daughter of the Nile)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	For Egypt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Damkianna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/gifts).



“May Hatshepsut the Glorious endure forever! I offer my respects to your Radiance.”

“Even after all my hard work, you speak like a child with its mouth full of honey cakes,” said Mara severely, taking just such a cake from the platter beside her. Ah, but it was good to be back in Egypt! “But pharaoh will understand you, and she already knows you are a barbarian.”

“Mara,” said Inanni, falling back into Babylonian and frowning at her painted face in the bronze mirror, “could you not say the words for me?”

“Of course I could,” Mara replied. Like Inanni, she was admiring her handiwork, though by looking at the original instead of its reflection. Inanni had never let her apply eye paint before. The bright green suited her, though nothing could suit the garish Canaanite robes she still refused to exchange for linen. “But it will be much better coming from you. I can step in after you begin, if needed.”

“You know it will be needed. Months of your lessons, and I can hardly put three words together in Egyptian.”

“It is a great pity you didn’t know you would be married off years ago,” Mara agreed, “or I would have started teaching you when we first met, and you might by now have an accent that wouldn’t offend Thutmose’s ear.”

Sighing, Inanni sank onto the delicate Egyptian chair at the center of the pavilion. Their river barge bobbed gently on the waves, its hold loaded with the chests of fine wool Mara had insisted be left a sun-bleached white. All the gifts and luggage were securely stowed, the passengers ritually purified—everything in perfect readiness for the journey from Abydos to Thebes. Only Mara’s princess was unprepared. “I’ll be certain to offend him, one way or another. Everything you’ve told me about Egyptian customs is so strange, so unnatural! And I’ve never felt less desirable in my life.”

Mara had to admit Inanni didn’t show to advantage just at the moment. The eye paint did little to hide her anxious pallor and nothing at all for the sweat-dampened curls that fell limply about her downcast face. Mara’s time on the plains of Syria had not accustomed her nose to the smell of sheep or her tongue to the taste of bitter wine, but her eye had found a new and strange kind of beauty there, and she knew Inanni happy and at home was a delight to look upon. Yet if Mara presented Inanni to the prince in this state, the most she could hope for was pity.

Saying so would serve neither of them; she must distract Inanni instead. “Only think, if you do offend him, the worst that can happen is that he will refuse to marry you! And then they will send you home, and you can spend the rest of your life sleeping on scratchy blankets and kneading coarse bread, rather than reclining on couches of ebony and eating rare sweetmeats. I can’t see why you’d like that better, but if you insist that you would—”

“But would _you_ like it?” Inanni asked, turning all that anxiety upon Mara. “If they do send me back, would you rather stay here, in the country of your birth?”

 _Ai_ , that was the question, and one Mara hadn’t yet answered for herself. “I don’t long for Egypt the way you do for Canaan,” she said. “I have no family here, no-one to miss or to miss me. I won’t make a friend of every herdsman and weaver and mason I meet, as you do. It isn’t the same.”

“As long as I’ve known you, you’ve talked of nothing but Egypt.”

Mara dimpled. “Oh, yes—of the food, and the music, and the perfume, and the poetry! It’s true, Canaan has nothing to compare. Perhaps you’re right. Friendship is small recompense for fine culture.”

“That is not what I meant!” Inanni protested.

Before Mara could laugh at her, she heard the sound of voices outside the pavilion: one of Inanni’s serving-women was speaking in Babylonian, but the woman replying in the same language was certainly Egyptian.

Rising, she pushed back the hanging carpet that served for a wall. The serving-woman turned to her at once, all aflutter. “Mara, oh, Mara. She says she is—”

“I am Reputneb, an interpreter,” said the Egyptian. “Here to serve her highness.”

Mara arched one eyebrow in surprise and inspected this new arrival. She was a little older than Mara, and well dressed, but with an odd, hungry look about her. Mara recognized that look, for she had once worn it herself. Though there was also an uncertainty in her expression that was foreign to Mara’s nature.

“I have no need of an interpreter,” said Inanni in surprise. “I have Mara.”

The interpreter looked, for a moment, as though she’d been struck. Then she recovered quickly. “You are the princess Inanni?” She bowed low, with more respect than grace, and a hair too deeply for her station. “I am sent to guide you to the Golden House and be your mouth and ears before pharaoh and her brother. Would you refuse the gift of those who have summoned you?”

“Oh, no,” Inanni said at once, “I would not refuse. That is—” looking to Mara— “not if it would show disrespect.”

“The princess Inanni will of course accept any gift offered by the glorious Daughter of Ra,” Mara put in smoothly. “She offers her humblest thanks. But perhaps the palace was not aware she has numbered an Egyptian among her handmaidens these three years and more.”

Whatever the palace knew, Reputneb clearly had not. She looked between Mara and Inanni with a quick dart of the eye, and this too Mara recognized. It was the look of one about to fail at a task, who knows she will be punished for that failure.

“Though having lived out of Egypt for those years, I am perhaps less accustomed to the manners and practices of the court than I might be,” Mara added, with a smile condescending enough to imply otherwise. “And her highness’ consequence is surely enough to admit another lady to her train.”

Reputneb’s eyebrows lifted slightly as she looked about the room, which was strewn with the crude and tasteless trappings of Babylonian femininity. Mara raised her chin and dared her to say a word. “That is certainly so,” Reputneb agreed after a pause. “I am honored to be welcomed into her household.”

“And you are indeed welcome,” said Inanni, offering an open smile that showed no awareness of these currents. “Let’s find you a place to sleep.”

As her princess busied herself with this task, Mara sat back to finish her honey cake and consider the newest addition to their household, wondering about the secrets she might be hiding.

***

She had ample time to wonder, first as the barge made its stately way upriver, and then over the next week as they whiled away the hours in luxurious boredom, waiting for pharaoh’s summons. Reputneb tried at first to ingratiate herself with Inanni and even with Mara, but she was clumsier at it than Mara would have been, and Inanni was too open and kind to need any such effort, so Mara was only amused. Then, as days passed and there was still no summons, the interpreter grew short-tempered and fearful, until it was clear she was the most impatient among them for Inanni to meet her bridegroom.

The delay was extremely ill-mannered, and Mara was certainly indignant on Inanni’s behalf. It was beyond belief that _Reputneb_ would take the slight so personally, however, when she had scarcely met the princess and when Mara could see disdain for the barbarian girl under all her carefully-guarded courtesy. Mara saw it so easily because she had once felt it herself, just as she had known the hunger and fear of a trapped animal with freedom just outside its grasp. She said nothing to Inanni of this fellow-feeling, because she could not entirely explain it, and because she did not like to remember what her life and her feelings had been before Inanni had taken her in.

She had reached no real conclusions about the interpreter when at last they were called into the presence of the Daughter of the Sun. Reputneb tried to take advantage of the sudden announcement, declaring there was no need for a second Egyptian in the princess’ procession, but Mara simply agreed it would be unnecessary for them both to go and took Inanni’s shaking arm in a steady grip. When Reputneb saw Mara would not be dislodged, she gave up her objections and found her place at Inanni’s other hand, as though she’d always intended to be there.

As they approached the great hall, though, and Reputneb began to translate the flood of instructions from the chamberlain, Mara was glad enough to give up her formal role as interpreter. Despite her best efforts, Mara began to tremble almost as badly as the princess. Beyond the inner doors sat a god in human form. Even her cynicism was not proof against that. She held Inanni tightly and hoped this show of support would be enough for them both, only releasing her when the entire procession entered and fell to the floor, pressing their foreheads to the cool tiles under Hatshepsut’s severe gaze.

At pharaoh’s word, Inanni rose. When Reputneb made to speak, the princess interrupted her, reciting the phrases of greeting and esteem on which Mara had drilled her for weeks.

Her accent was a barbarian’s, and her voice was frightened, but the words were clear. Pharaoh’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, and Mara’s heart swelled with pride.

Reputneb began to translate after that, whispering into Inanni’s ear as the conversation continued. Mara watched as pharaoh spoke to Count Senmut, whose every look and gesture spoke of the power that had kept Hatshepsut on the throne for nearly two decades. She watched as pharaoh gestured to Lord Sheftu, a young man who smiled with lazy grace and wore emeralds at his throat. She was struck with fear and wonder that she, Mara, a runaway slave, should be standing now in the greatest house of the world.

Then she began to pay more attention to what Hatshepsut was saying to her advisers, and her awe turned to indignation.

Three years ago, she might have tried to conceal that indignation from Inanni once they were in private. She would have wanted to avoid Inanni’s tears, and she might, even, have wanted to spare her the disappointment. But now she was perfectly open from the moment they returned to Inanni’s chambers and she had shooed everyone—especially Reputneb—from the room. “They have not summoned you here to honor Thutmose, princess. I heard them speaking of it, though Reputneb chose not to translate. _Ai_ , I can hardly blame her! It is a punishment for him, to be married to a barbarian. Pharaoh, his sister, looks forward to his fury.”

Inanni’s sweet eyes, which had been teetering on the brink of those dreaded tears, now widened in astonishment. “But why?”

“Because not all sisters love their brothers as you do. I suppose he is a threat.” Her mind continued to work, twisting and teasing at the problem. She had been so long out of Egypt! When she served in the scribe’s house at the northern border, she had seen so many comings and goings, had been present for so many dictations of letters and contracts, that even as a slave she had been well-informed on the business of the court and its politicians. Now, she could not say the same.

When she resurfaced from these unsatisfactory reflections, Mara found Inanni lost in her own thoughts. “I am sorry, my princess,” she said, suddenly contrite. “I know you hoped to find your bridegroom satisfactory, despite everything else.”

“It’s not that, Mara,” said Inanni, and indeed, she looked less disappointed than determined. “I am only thinking of how we are to approach the audience with him.”

“Why, we must say nothing of this, of course, and hope that he has better manners than pharaoh’s courtiers!”

“No.” Inanni said it quietly, but with decision. “If he will not marry me, I would prefer to know it at once, that I may leave before I waste more of his time or my own. If he will marry me to satisfy pharaoh, and against his own wishes, then I will be his wife, Mara—and I will not be joined to him with this lie between us.”

Mara stared at her face, which was set with more conviction than she had seen since they left Syria. Then she laughed. “Very well; I am only a humble handmaiden, unfit to advise a princess on such lofty matters! We will be rude, which is another word for honest, and see how the prince takes it. But I would suggest, my princess, that we do so without the assistance of your official interpreter. I do not trust her.”

Disposing of Reputneb was easier said than done. From the moment the prince’s summons came, she hung on Inanni’s arm, refusing Mara’s every attempt to distract her. In the end Inanni had to dismiss her directly. The task was almost too much for her kind heart—Reputneb stammered and nearly sobbed in fear despite Inanni’s promise that it was a temporary dismissal. “It is only for this first meeting,” she said earnestly. “Let me look upon my intended in privacy, with only my most intimate companion beside me. There, now, we will be back soon enough.”

Her intended did _not_ have better manners than the courtiers. Mara wondered how Reputneb would have translated his open displeasure. He spoke far too quickly for Inanni, with her meager Egyptian, but she hardly needed to know the words to grasp their meaning.

Mara brought him up short, however, with her clear statement of Inanni’s position: that she knew the marriage was unwelcome to him, and she sympathized, hoping they need not blame one another for their difficult situation.

He was a remarkable man, Thutmose, with an intensity to match or perhaps surpass his sister’s. When he turned the full force of this upon them, it fell like a blow. “And what does she propose, then?” he inquired, his eyes upon Inanni, but his words, still in Egyptian, to Mara.

“That you tell her if the marriage can succeed,” Mara translated, “in which case she will do everything reasonable to make it agreeable to you.” Inanni had said _everything possible_. Mara saw Thutmose note her choice of words, but he did not comment. “But if it cannot, that you instead tell her the quickest way to change pharaoh’s mind, and that you would see the princess as an ally in this matter and not an enemy, so she may go back to her beloved homeland as soon as may be arranged.”

“That is fair enough,” Thutmose said, all his caged energy tamped down for the moment. “Though it is not what I had expected. Let me think—” And he turned, beginning to stride swiftly back and forth across the room as Inanni’s apprehension grew visibly.

At last he halted almost mid-stride. “Yes,” he said, less to Mara or Inanni than to himself. “It is well enough. Tell your barbarian princess I will not marry her, and if she wishes to change Hatshepsut’s mind I am the wrong man to ask! But if she would to change pharaoh’s mind—yes, it is very well.” Then he whirled to look straight at Mara, who resisted the temptation to cower. “I have greater concerns at the moment than a foreign bride, but tell her it will serve both of us if she can bide her time. We will treat the marriage as though it will move forward. I will pay her whatever attentions are necessary, and Hatshepsut will think I am resigned to my fate.”

“It would not be such a terrible fate as that,” Mara retorted, even as she was shocked by her own daring. But if she did not like to see Inanni used so casually by pharaoh, she liked it no better from this prince.

To her surprise, he smiled. It was not a very kind smile, but it transformed his face. “You are that fond of her, little Blue Eyes? Well, you may tell her we are indeed allies and not enemies, and I hope to have better news for her soon. But if that is to happen, I have very little time to spend reassuring a mother hen of an interpreter or dancing attendance on her chick.” Then his face changed again, storm-clouds gathering behind his troubled eyes. “Yes, there is very little time. Now begone.”

And gone they were, Inanni in a flutter of relief, Mara in some confusion. She did not know what to make of this prince in his prison, any more than she did of the pharaoh and her smiling advisers. She could not tell how to advise Inanni, for she had the sense of greater things than she knew moving beneath the surface of every conversation in the Golden House. And she had no notion of what she ought to do for herself, and was moreover a little alarmed that this consideration came to her after those other concerns. Perhaps she had grown too comfortable in Inanni’s household, and she no longer knew how to look out for herself.

Well, she would remember! She ate well at the evening meal, enjoying every bite of roasted waterfowl and every sip of the excellent wine. Then she summoned a slave to dress her hair with a blue lotus and to drape her in sheer linens and rub her skin with scented lotions. Then she set out on her own to one of the beautiful gardens she and Inanni had seen from the rooftops, intending to walk and to consider what she would do next if her princess did not marry Thutmose after all.

The gardens were cool and lovely, but the main courtyards were too crowded for her busy mind, and she sought out one of the branching paths to take her farther from the hum of conversation. As she walked in something closer to solitude, thinking of those first few heady and terrifying months of her freedom in Syria and of the worries and desires she had nourished then, she realized that a man had fallen in beside her, matching his longer strides to her own.

Mara would have moved aside to let him pass, but before she could do so, he had closed his hand tightly about her upper arm.

She stifled a gasp. She might have screamed for help, but she had already seen that this man’s jeweled collar and golden armbands marked him out even in a court of wealthy and well-dressed nobles. With a man like this, best to see what he wanted. His grasp on her arm, she saw, might appear companionable from a distance. Very well—she, too, could pretend.

“Your name, girl?” His voice was hard, and his face was like granite.

“Mara, handmaiden and interpreter to the princess Inanni. What can my lord want of one so lowly?”

“Information,” he said. “You will tell me how you got there before me, and at once.”

“I—do not understand, my lord. Where have I come before you?”

“To the Canaanite. How did you secure your position, when I had arranged for an interpreter myself? Who paid for you? And how did you ensure _you_ were the one admitted to her conference with the prince?”

So this man was the reason for Reputneb’s appearance in Abydos— _hai_ , and her desperation today as well, if Mara was any judge! A man like this could make anyone afraid. “In that case, I came many years before you, my lord. I have been in Inanni’s service since well before her betrothal. My pay is no-one’s concern but hers, and I am in her confidence.”

“I see.” He did not, entirely, look appeased. Mara bit down on her tongue, which would have poured out any lie or reassurance to remove that hand from her arm. “How did you come into her service?”

This lie, at least, was well practiced and close to the truth. “I served the wife of a wealthy scribe, my lord, who went abroad with him to Syria. While we were there, I met Inanni. She took a liking to me and to my Babylonian, and when the scribe and his wife returned to Egypt, I stayed.” The man’s expectant look did not change, and she cast about for more to satisfy him. “It pleased me to serve a princess.”

“A Canaanite princess,” he said. “A barbarian.”

“Yes, my lord—but that is more than a scribe.”

“And a handmaid to a barbarian princess is more than a handmaid to the wife of a scribe! I see. So you are ambitious. Will it please you to serve the wife of pharaoh’s brother, do you think?”

“How could it not please one such as I, to live in the Golden House and serve the greatest wife in the land?”

“Indeed,” he said, very dryly. “And yet even when you do, your situation might be improved—or reduced.”

Mara swallowed hard but kept her voice light. “I suppose that is true, my lord.”

“And what would you do, girl, to improve your situation?”

“What would my lord ask of me?”

“Information,” he said again. “You are in a position to overhear many sensitive conversations. There could be a great deal for you to gain in that, and a great deal to be lost if you refuse. But I need to consider how best to approach this. You, in turn, must consider how to serve your ambitions.”

“I always do,” she said, but his cold eye put paid to her flippancy, and she lowered her eyes as though in deference. “Is it permitted to know your name?”

“You have no need of it now and will learn it soon enough. If I decide I want to use you, I will approach you in some other way. And, girl—” He halted, suddenly looming over her. His face wore a thin smile. “If anyone should learn what we discussed today, you will not live long enough to regret your error. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.”

“Good.” At last he released her. “Think on what I’ve said. If you hear from me again, I will expect an immediate answer.” Before she could give voice to any one of a hundred questions, he was leaving her, and a moment later was lost among the courtiers who moved through the garden.

Somehow she found her way to a bench. Sinking down gratefully upon it, Mara gathered her shaking hands in her lap where no-one could see.

The fire of the sunset had grown and faded again, but she had not yet managed to put her thoughts in order, when a man sat down beside her.

Mara had the impression of another jeweled collar, another suit of royal linen, and she stiffened. But this was a different man, a younger man. She recognized him from the public audience that morning, where his insouciant grace had struck her—Lord Sheftu, one of pharaoh’s close advisors. Only the curiously plain amulet about his wrist, which rested on the bench beside her own, was at odds with his effortlessly noble appearance.

“What has he promised you?” Lord Sheftu asked.

She was growing tired of discourteous men who began in the middle of a conversation. “I don’t know who you mean, my lord.”

“An interpreter,” he went on. She might not have spoken at all. “That was clever. I suppose he brought you on at Abydos. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it myself.”

“I am an interpreter, my lord,” said Mara, a little stiffly, “but no-one brought me on.”

“Come now!” He had a charming smile, but danger lurked beneath it. “Let us not play games, little one. That crocodile has his teeth deep in you. I only want to know what you are doing to get them out.”

Her temper was already frayed. Now it broke entirely. “ _Ai _, you have it as wrong as he did, but both of you are pleased enough with your own brilliance to leap to conclusions! I was not brought on at Abydos, and I am not here to serve any intrigue. You may ask anyone who knows me! I am here to serve the princess Inanni, as I have done for years. I wish to know nothing of crocodiles and nothing of you.”__

__He considered this in silence. The crowds in the garden had grown thinner, and she was beginning to wish she had fled long ago. “I can find out soon enough whether you speak the truth.”_ _

__“Find out whatever you like. It is nothing to me.”_ _

__“It may be a very great deal to you. You expect me to believe this story? It is unwise to lie to me. What was an Egyptian girl like you doing in Canaan?”_ _

__“I am very fond of sheep,” Mara said tartly._ _

__His eyes darkened, and she found it difficult to breathe. “Careful, my girl. I’ll have the truth, and when I do, you may have your life.”_ _

__“Very well,” she said, still light, as though she did not believe his threat to her bone. And yet she found herself giving him the truth indeed, as she had not with the man who came before. “I was a slave when I traveled there with my master, a scribe, and saw an opportunity for my freedom. I ran away to hide among the foreigners, and the lady Inanni found me and kept me safe. I’ve been with her ever since.”_ _

__His cool eyes rested on her a long while before he nodded. “Yes, that has the ring of truth—though I daresay you can spin a lie as well as any! You have that look about you.”_ _

__“You do me honor, my lord.”_ _

__“Keep a civil tongue in that pretty head,” he advised, “or you will find the court less friendly than a Canaanite shepherd’s tent. So you don’t serve Nahereh.”_ _

__“I don’t even know who that is.”_ _

__“Brother to Count Senmut. He is the man who had you so terrified not half an hour ago.”_ _

__“I serve no man at this court.”_ _

__“That may be wise of you. Though you might be wiser still, and serve something greater.”_ _

__“And what might that be, my lord?”_ _

__“Egypt,” he said, with an intensity and conviction that shook her; but before Mara could ask what he meant, and why this moved him so, he had risen. “We will meet again, and soon. When we do, we may have something interesting to say to one another. But first, I need to think.”_ _

__It was very late by the time Mara returned to her rooms. Inanni welcomed her with relief. “I had grown so worried!”_ _

__“Be easy in your mind, my princess—I made certain to return before you went to bed. I know how you need to be reassured before you will climb into that carved beast of a couch!”_ _

__“Mara, do not laugh at me,” Inanni said, peering into her face. “I see that you have been frightened, as well. What is it?”_ _

__“First, tell me where that snake Reputneb has slithered off to.”_ _

__“I have not seen her since we met with Thutmose.”_ _

__“Good,” Mara said decisively; then she frowned. “Is that good? I hardly know. It may be a very bad sign—at least for Reputneb! She was sent to spy on you, my princess.”_ _

__“Come here and tell me everything.”_ _

__And so she did, plainly and without hesitation. Inanni’s face grew pale as she listened, and by the end she had reached for Mara’s hands, which to her own disgust were trembling again._ _

__“I knew there were forces and intrigues here beyond my understanding,” Mara finished, “but not quite how dangerous they were, and not that we might become so entangled in them! I think this Nahereh and this Sheftu are at odds, which may mean that Sheftu and Senmut are also working against one another—but if that is true, then the queen is deceived. And if that in turn is true—”_ _

__“The prince is certainly involved,” Inanni said. Her eyes were very wide._ _

__Mara nodded. “We must end this quickly. Whatever Thutmose needs to dissolve the betrothal, we will do, and then you may leave at once.”_ _

__“That is one path,” Inanni said slowly. “Where will it take you?”_ _

__“Take me?”_ _

__“If I leave, Mara—will you join me, or will you try your luck with these intrigues, if it means you may stay in the country you’ve longed for?” Mara didn’t know, and this must have shown plain on her face. Inanni shook her head. “And that is not the only question. Mara, you may not understand all the forces working here, but which do you prefer?”_ _

__Mara scarcely had to think. “It is as Lord Sheftu said—that Nahereh is indeed a crocodile. I should much prefer Sheftu if I had to choose, though he also thinks far too well of himself—yet there is something about him—”_ _

__Inanni gave a wobbly, watery laugh. “That is not quite what I meant, my dear Mara! No, if it is as we think, and the queen and her brother are working against one another: which of them would you choose?”_ _

__“Choose to what purpose?”_ _

__“For Egypt,” Inanni said, as though this was quite plain. “I know so little of the politics here, or what is to be done for the good of the country. And yet we find ourselves at its center. It seems to me that it is important to learn more of what is at stake, and when we learn, we may have to choose one side or the other. I would like to choose well.”_ _

__Mara shook her head. “I have been asked, today, to choose for ambition and to choose for my own life. How could I choose for an entire country?”_ _

__“Perhaps it won’t be asked of us,” Inanni said. “Perhaps I’m wrong, and we can do nothing for good or ill. But while we wait for Thutmose to end the betrothal, if these two men approach you again and it seems they are indeed working at cross-purposes—”_ _

__“Yes,” said Mara, “I see what you mean.” She smiled, recovering some of her sense of the absurd. “It is ridiculous, is it not? That such weighty matters might be decided by the whims of a guttersnipe like me?”_ _

__“Is it better that an Egyptian guttersnipe decides, or a barbarian princess?”_ _

__“I have had enough with impossible questions for one day! Now, to bed, and I promise the couch will not eat you in the night.”_ _

__Mara herself stayed up very late, unable to sleep on her own exquisite ebony headrest. She wondered what it might mean to choose for Egypt and what service a great country might require of her. These were not questions she had ever thought to ask, and not questions she knew yet how to answer; but she thought they might not be impossible after all, when she and Inanni met them together._ _


End file.
